With all the new 3D printers, new materials and new software, it’s hard to keep up. The information blasts can be dizzying.

Senvol.com/database has a free search engine for sorting through all the materials and all the machines out there. We did a search on materials. First, we had the option to specify ceramics, polymer (plastic), sand, wax, composite or metal. But that was just the beginning. From there we could choose the tensile strength, the flexural strength and many other variables. There was another category for how well the material withstands various temperatures and another for the material’s hardness and density. The machine selection has 37 printer manufacturers to choose from and a lot more variables to specify. This is a happy hunting ground for an engineer or a hobbyist.